Samanunga

The NPR, the National Public Radio (USA), asked their audience about what children do with technology. The responses gave a nice overview of the current momentum of technology in the life of the very young.

“We saw a bit of trend in your stories: cell phones + water = gadget death. A surprising number of variations on that theme involved toilets, pet water bowls and kid drool. Still a whole other category involved stories of repeated 911 dialing, hiding tech toys from stressed parents and inserting all sorts of food into drives and slots of all kinds.

But not all stories involved destruction or police knocking at the door. Below are some of the standouts (…)”

Submitted through Twitter:

• 4 year old learned to type his name on my first blackberry
• Last night my daughter used my cell phone as a flash light in bed after lights out.
• …etc – more in the original article

full article @ npr.org

Google recently released it’s own browser: Chrome. Using it is of course a trade of privacy versus convenience. However, now there is an unpolished version: Iron. Some German software developers stripped the source code of Chrome from any reference or feedback link to Google. Browse with the benefits of Chrome, and whithout the privacy worries.

article @ downloadsquad.com
iron @ srware.net

Outdoctrination, I am outdoctrinated, you are outdoctrinated? Children behave beyond the descriptive power of science in Sugata Mitra: Can kids teach themselves?, an inspiring and revealing talk at the LIFT conference 2007 in Geneva.

Sugata Mitra worked on the “internet in a wall” experiment. Take a monitor, put it in a hole in the wall and provide a mouse. Watch what happens when children start to discover. Repeat all over “demographically-rich” India.

The full presentation takes 21 minutes. If you want to skip the intro and experimental scientific stuff, FFWD to approx 15 minutes in time where he presents his findings. Some high-lights:

• children take about eight minutes to figure out how to browse the internet.
• children teach themselves English to read on the internet
• (in 3 months approx 200 words – all mispronounced but actively used)
• children work consistently in small groups (±4), combining DIY with teaching eachother
• scientifically no external factors seem to correlate with the learning experience and still it happens: how do we go about?

Watch the video at TED.com

Is it a hoax, or is it true horror…

A relatively unkown species of ants is invading Texas, and it is eating Electronic Equipment! Computers, burglar alarm systems, gas and electricity meters, iPods, telephone exchanges, nothing seems safe for these hungry little creatures.

They are hard to extinguish, because they pile their dead to create a safe path through pesticides. SMART!

original article @ timesonline
dutch news @ volkskrant.nl

Easter is all about finding Easter Eggs. Let’s find them with… Google of course!

More easter eggs in this article.

Happy Easter!

Finally someone took the courage be an entrepreneur in gaming and fitness. An idea I have been thinking of for long, but never took the effort of actually working it out. Carla Scholten started two years ago and was inspired by American concepts, probably like this example reported on CNET. Last 28th of January, Carla’s vision materialized in Eindhoven, released by Erica Terpstra and presented by Hans van Breukelen.
(more…)

…and again some website-issues. This time it was updating the wordpress software that encountered a more technical issue on the side of my provider.

nevertheless, I am back online. Will redo the template untill it fit’s my ideas better and then back to blogging!

Wouter

My promotor Berry Eggen was invited to lecture at the kids’ university! I decided to be a part of that, and fortunately he would let me.

He presented a children’s course on Smart Inventions. Starting from Gyro Gearloose (more…)